The Blockchain Project: Ensuring Transparency in Public Services
Why it Works
Distributed Ledger: Blockchain is a decentralized system where transactions are recorded across multiple computers (nodes), ensuring transparency and security.
Cryptographic Security: Each transaction is encrypted and added to a chain of previous transactions, creating an immutable, tamper-resistant record.
Decentralization for Trust: Blockchain’s decentralized structure allows for secure, transparent interactions, reducing the potential for corruption or abuse of power, such as sexual extortion.
Anonymous and Secure Reporting: Blockchain enables the creation of systems where victims of sexual extortion can securely and anonymously report incidents without fear of retaliation, ensuring their safety.
Immutable Records as Evidence: Blockchain’s immutability provides victims with a trusted system for preserving evidence, making it harder for corrupt officials to tamper with or erase records of extortion.
Empowering Marginalized Groups: By decentralizing governance and ensuring accountability, blockchain empowers those most vulnerable to abuse, particularly women and marginalized communities, by giving them tools to report and combat extortion safely.
A Trust Issue
"For years, government policies on gender violence haven’t really protected us. Reporting feels risky, and I’m scared my personal information won’t be kept safe. I’ve heard of victims' details being leaked, and it’s hard to trust the system when it doesn’t seem to take us seriously."
Challenges
Limitations of the "Blockchain Promise"
Accessibility Issues: Blockchain technology often requires significant digital literacy and internet access, which can exclude marginalized groups who lack these resources.
Energy and Environmental Impact: Blockchain systems, especially those using proof-of-work models, can be energy-intensive and unsustainable, posing environmental concerns.
Privacy and Misuse Risks: While blockchain ensures transparency, it also raises questions about privacy. In some cases, the immutability of data could work against victims if sensitive information becomes publicly accessible.
Potential Hidden Complexity for Developers: Blockchain can run in the background, but developers must ensure it integrates seamlessly, keeping the app user-friendly and free of technical barriers.
Cost Considerations: Blockchain implementation involves costs like transaction fees, development, and maintenance. To ensure accessibility, organizations must consider cost-efficient alternatives like private blockchains or Layer 2 solutions.
Immutability: while beneficial for data integrity, can work against user empowerment if mistakes or outdated information are recorded permanently, limiting users' ability to correct or delete their data, particularly in sensitive cases.
Potential for Innovation, Empowerment and Inclusion
Why Our Approach Works
Designing with, Not for: Participatory design involves co-creating technology with marginalized communities, fostering trust and ensuring the solutions meet their actual needs.
Building Ethical Technology Together: Involving diverse stakeholders (participatory design) in the design process makes technology more inclusive and reflective of users' lived experiences.
Care Ethics in Technology Design: this could ensure that technology prioritizes the well-being of individuals, through focus on social relations and power relations - especially on its assymetries. By centering the voices and needs of marginalized groups, care ethics emphasizes inclusive design that genuinely addresses their concerns and fosters equitable technology solutions.
Informed, Contextualized Decisions: quantitative and qualitative research could explore the structural, cultural, and socioeconomic factors driving the need for the tech and its embace, informing strategies to companies within a historical-sociological framework.
Creating a Holistic Framework
Combining Blockchain with Care Ethics and Participatory Design: A balanced approach that integrates blockchain’s transparency with the ethical responsibility of care and participatory design is key. This ensures that technology is both effective and inclusive.
